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by Sara GordonCATS Playhouse, (Children & Adults Theatrical Studio, Inc.), 2257 34th St, Lubbock, TX 79411, USAFeb 13-15 & Feb 20-22Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 3pmCharlotte Brontë has a confession about how one sister became an idol, and the other became known as the third sister. You know the one. No, not that one. The other, other one… Anne.This is not a story about well-behaved women. This is a story about the power of words. It’s about sisters and sisterhood, love and jealousy, support and competition.Sarah Gordon’s new play is an irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters, and the story of the sibling power dynamics that shaped their uneven rise to fame.“Underdog: The Other Other Brontë” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.
I am a diehard fan of the book, but disagree wildly with those whose feathers are ruffled by the film. There are over 20 adaptations of the story; each has changed something in the journey from page to screen, but Fennell is the first to really lean into the twisted love Cathy and Heathcliff shared.The screen sizzles every time Robbie and Elordi stand within a foot of each other. Their love, their anger, is alive in their every move.The film is pulsating, slightly savage, wildly sexy, and full of torment - the torment that Brontë so perfectly wrote about. Fennell is the first to truly capture this. Some will complain. I say all hail this bold and delicious adaptation. (Cara O'Doherty)
Dark, Gorgeous, and Deeply Unwholesome (And I Loved It) (...)The craft across the board is exceptional. Linus Sandgren shot this on 35mm, and it shows. Suzie Davies’s production design and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are doing heavy lifting in every frame. BAFTA-nominated editor Victoria Boydell keeps the pacing tight even when the movie lingers, and the combination of Anthony Willis’s score with original songs by Charli XCX gives the whole thing a pulse that most period films just don’t have.The characters are not meant to be likable, but the film itself is irresistibly watchable. It’s a dark, gorgeous, deeply unwholesome watch, and on the strength of that, Emerald Fennell still can’t do wrong in my book. (Emma Loggins)
Everything Is Romantic in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Even the Grotesque, Animalistic. (...)“Wuthering Heights,” quotation marks emphasized, will not please everyone. The Brontë purists, the casual watchers looking for an Austenian lightness and the easily disturbed will find this lewd movie off-putting. But for those of us who are ravenous, wildly bored with the mundane and thoroughly incensed by aesthetic grandeur, a transcendent world of pleasure, horror and tragedy awaits. (Ruth Abramovitz)
Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Shine In A Visually Bold But Loosely Faithful Adaptation. (...)Emerald Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights is shallow but fun, it is a visually striking film that really manages to impress in that front, and will please all the Twilight crowd, who has been missing something like this for the big screen in quite a while, and I’m sure Fennell could make an entire career out of doing films like that as there is certainly an audience for cotton candy out there. This version definitely lacks the nuance and depth that make the story a classic, but you can still have fun watching it. (Nelson Acosta)
Love, Sex, and Death: "Wuthering Heights" Is an Exultation of Cinema’s Singular Language.Emerald Fennell’s fast and loose adaptation of Emily Brontë’s one novel is a masterful demonstration of film’s transformative nature. (...)Perhaps love is a truly wretched endeavor if our most iconic stories just have lovers vacillating between cruelty and affection. “Wuthering Heights” will impact viewers in a similar way, as its departure from source material and focus on certain themes at the expense of others is certain to upset some. But the same divergence from the book, which includes Fennell’s masterful depiction of various manner of sensual things, will delight just as many. Love it or hate it, apropos for a story that amalgamates both love and hate into one grotesque, yet irresistible whole, “Wuthering Heights” stands as a triumph of cinematic storytelling. (Zach Yonzon)
"Wuthering Heights" occasionally feels like a music video thanks to the anachronistic pop songs of charli xcx, the pastrylike costumes by Jacqueline Durran and the fanciful visual touches (like a fireplace made of dozens of porcelain hands). It all adds to the heightened effect, but it’s the two lovers’ raw emotions that stay with us. "Whatever our souls are made of," Cathy says in one of Brontë’s most famous lines, "his and mine are the same." (Rafer Guzmán)
Ultimately, “Wuthering Heights” plays like a lush, sometimes very sexy showcase of Cathy and Heathcliff circling each other, then finally giving in. When they do, they seem to consummate their passion everywhere: in the grass, in the bedroom, in a carriage, against a garden wall. The montage goes on. And on. Robbie and Elordi have real chemistry, assisted by gauzy light, artificial sweat, and Charli XCX’s amazingly sultry, vaporous soundtrack. Yet no amount of face-licking, finger-sucking, or barn humping can quite summon the wild, punitive grandeur of Brontë’s imagination. In the novel, Cathy and Heathcliff’s bond feels metaphysical, destructive, almost demonic. Here, it is passionate, photogenic, and curiously safe. The movie insists on its own intensity. Brontë never had to. (Constance Ayrton)
Lukewarm
‘Wuthering Heights’ is a bold, filthy fantasy — but these moors need more erotic heat. (...)Though “Wuthering Heights” is a phony tease, I’m grateful that Fennell wants to titillate audiences. If they show up, they’ll help her convince the industry to move past chasing superheroes in codpieces and make more movies about messy, marvelous human sweat. The box office isn’t my personal kink; movie reviews are where you and I meet to talk about what gets us hot and bothered. But I hope Fennell, and other hedonistic filmmakers like her, get to keep whipping blockbusters out of their doldrums. (Amy Nicholson)
Emerald Fennell’s weakest film yet isn’t as steamy as you think it will be — if it was a spice, it would be flour. (...)As I said in the headline, if this film was a spice, it would be flour. You can't market something solely on the promise of hedonistic lusting and then deliver something you'd actually feel comfortable watching with your parents. I doubt it would even have made ripples 20 or 30 years ago. But sure, Elordi will get some cheers when he takes his top off.Will I be watching "Wuthering Heights" again? No. Do I remain a Saltburn truther? Yes. Will Fennell's latest make a shed-ton of money at the box office despite being widely panned? Absolutely. I've got a sneaking suspicion that Fennell kicks into full gear with original stories, so don't count me out of her work completely. (Jasmine Valentine)
A Wuthering Heights that repels as much as it entrances. (...)There is more depth in the photography than in Robbie’s and Elordi’s much-hyped chemistry, which never quite sparks into life despite both delivering fine performances.Fennell’s is the cinema of excess and sensation. In her rush to overwhelm, much of the nuance is lost, or to put it another way, she cuts out the boring bits. This is not a desecration by any measure, but the filmmaker’s determination to evoke a response might leave you wondering what all the noise is about. (John Maguire)
Brontë’s genius lies in complicating hate and love, in passing burdens across generations. Heathcliff curses Catherine and yet desires that, even in death, they remain together. The relentless weight of longing is largely absent from Fennell’s vision. It is less poetic, less devastating and ultimately less necessary than the book.But it is also bold, sensuous and strange — a "Wuthering Heights" that belongs to no fixed moment, buoyed by Charli XCX’s pulse and Fennell’s glossy perversity. It may not haunt you. But it lingers as a kind of restless urge that suggests some stories, no matter how often retold, refuse containment. (Ana Gutierrez)
Whether this literal interpretation is meant as dark humour or simply more literary incompetence is unclear, but if you have not seen it yet, it’s a horror best avoided.Overall, this Valentine’s Day, spare yourself the likely disappointment and the nightmare-inducing BDSM fantasies of Fennell’s Australian-infused reimagining and do something far less of a mood killer. The film has already been met with low ratings from critics, fulfilling the predictions of many classic purists, and perhaps the only saving grace is the vocals of Charli XCX who has created a new album to feature on the soundtrack.If you cherish the original novel, it may be wiser to avert your eyes from cinemas altogether and instead settle in for Scotland vs. England at the Six Nations. (Angelina Nayar)
On the whole, despite the technical finesse and strong performances, Wuthering Heights disappoints, thanks to bizarre developments and uneven writing. It’s expected to open strongly in its home market, but in India, the buzz is limited. Moreover, with tough competition from Hindi releases, it’ll have an uphill task at the box office.
Vulture critics advise against reading Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights before watching Emerald Fennell's new film adaptation. They argue that adaptations like this one—described as extravagant, moist, and focused on adolescent turmoil, explicit romance, and a soundstage feel—stand on their own without needing prior knowledge of the novel's convoluted plot or second volume. We don't agree at all, but we are not exactly objective, didn't we?
Vogue discusses a recent Vogue Book Club event where Emerald Fennell discussed her adaptation, emphasizing the novel's transgressive, sadomasochistic undertones that she first discovered as a teenager, rejecting sanitized interpretations of its passionate dynamics between Heathcliff and Cathy. A "memorable" addition is the imagery of crushed eggs under bedsheets, an inside joke between Heathcliff and Cathy that Fennell personally filmed by sitting on them.
Richard Benson in The Independent has a point when it says critics have accused the film of stripping Wuthering Heights of its racial and class dimensions — central themes in Emily Brontë’s novel’s exploration of social hierarchy and conflict. It argues that this critique reflects a wider “poshification” of culture in which middle- and upper-class creatives and narratives are increasingly dominant, marginalising working-class voices that historically resonate with many of the novel’s core preoccupations. Against this backdrop, the article highlights Ireland’s pioneering Basic Income for the Arts scheme — a policy intended to support diverse artistic talent by reducing financial barriers to creative careers — suggesting that structural change is needed so that more artists can tell stories with depth on class and power, much like Wuthering Heights itself.
At the start of production, Suzie's initial design ideas were more traditional, but she soon realised that wasn't the way forward for this unique take on the story – this was not going to look like every other period drama. Emerald, as she explains, was clear about wanting the crew to ‘zoom through the lens of her reading that book when she was 14’, and this was the key to some of the main anachronistic elements. Pushing back against the idea of faithful representation, the team began to incorporate elements and references that a teenage girl might have been obsessed and inspired by in the 1990s and 2000s. In fact, the contrasting sets of Wuthering Heights and Cathy’s later home, Thrushcross Grange, feel influenced by the archetypal villain’s lair and princess’s castle of classic fairytales and Disney films. ‘It was more about accuracy of feeling’, rather than accuracy of period, she adds. (Tilly Wheeler)
The Independent highlights a 2020 Penguin Classics audiobook of Wuthering Heights narrated by British actor Aimee Lou Wood (with Kristin Atherton), presenting it as a compelling way to revisit Emily Brontë’s only novel amid renewed interest sparked by the latest film adaptation. USA Today discusses how Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff dramatically lifts Margot Robbie’s Catherine in a visually intense scene that reflects the raw, physical passion of the film.
The spirit of the Wuthering Heights heroine Cathy has visited Olivia Chaney at key moments in her life. Writing the songs for her second album, Shelter, in 2018, she retreated to a tiny tumbledown stone cottage in the North York Moors, where she lived for a couple of months without electricity or heating as winter was setting in. “I’d wake up in the morning and have to light two fires to make coffee and defrost my fingers,” she says. “I pretty much gave up washing. I remember going for a long walk one day and finding myself in the middle of a hunt. The way the huntsmen looked at me made me realise I’d gone full Mad Cathy.”More recently Chaney, 43, was approached by Emerald Fennell, who had heard the singer’s 2013 recording of the traditional folk ballad The Dark Eyed Sailor and wanted to use it — alongside the soundtrack by Charli XCX — as Cathy and Heathcliff’s theme in her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. The song is used to powerful effect in the film’s most pivotal scenes, when the lovers part and when they are reunited after Heathcliff’s long absence. (...)As we sit by the wood-burner in her cosy kitchen in York, Chaney reflects on the serendipity of Fennell choosing her work for this particular project. “If you had asked me which literary adaptation I would most have wanted my music to feature in, it would always have been Wuthering Heights. It’s my favourite novel. It felt life-changing when I first read it.” (...)Brontë was a keen pianist and the family are known to have owned Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of “literary ballads” edited by the novelist Walter Scott. “So these songs would have been very much part of their lives,” Chaney says. (Alice O’Keeffe)
According to Los Angeles Times, the moody, atmospheric aesthetic associated with Emily Brontë’s novel — characterised by dark woods, saturated colours like emerald and burgundy, and layered, warm lighting — is influencing current home-decor trends.
Bridestones Moor, famed for its interesting rock formations, sweeping moorland vistas and wildlife, is set to star on the big screen.The striking landscape will be part of Emerald Fennel’s upcoming adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. (Abigail Kellett)
Anita Rani in the Daily Mail thinks that Jacob Elordi in this Wuthering Heights is too white. Numéro thinks that 2026 marks a cultural shift from goth-inspired aesthetics to a broader romanticism in fashion and lifestyle, fueled by major media like Wuthering Heights and Bridgerton, which are driving renewed interest in empire-waist silhouettes, Regencycore, and emotionally rich, historically-inflected styles. Elle Canada interviews Alison Oliver.
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Was I entertained? Yes, actually. I didn’t long to leave my seat, and even found myself silently giggling over scenes that were clearly Elordi fanservice. “Was this in the book?’” a friend I watched it with (who actually has read the book) asked jokingly. No, reader, Heathcliff doesn’t have steamy sex with Catherine in the novel, nor does he take off his shirt to reveal glistening pecs and chest hair (spoiler alert). I suppose Fennell, and quite a few readers, wished he did, and that’s the crazy fantasy this film tries to bring forth. It’s a fairly good time at the movies if you show up with zero expectations beyond wanting to be occupied for a couple of hours. I just wish Fennell had ditched the title entirely and leaned into framing this as its own hideous, intriguing creature.Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is clearly engineered as a strategic, box-office Valentine’s release, buoyed by its sanitized, more palatable rendering of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love. We can’t fault her entirely for that: she’s hardly the first filmmaker to sand down Brontë’s rough edges. It’s a spectacle best experienced if you’re willing to surrender to it and ride the waves of its chaos rather than fight them. (Pilar Gonzalez)
Everyone should watch this film. To see how Robbie and Elordi carry this damaged, feral love. To notice the care in every image, the intention behind every rough edge. And to sit with a version of Wuthering Heights that feels painful, deliberate, and deeply felt, one that stays long after the lights come up.It’s dark and obsessive, gothic and damaged; not a love story, but a story of love torn apart, reclaimed, used, discarded, and haunting long after it’s gone. (Esha Aphale)
This rather modern-feeling adaptation can be accused of being so ridiculous, overdramatic, overly sexualised, hysterical, crass, and even a tad soap operatic. But it can also be called completely self-assured of all that it wants to be. It allows the heightened emotions of its two romantic but longing characters and applies them to the film, making it look as frenzied as a romance is between a young couple. There are so many scenes of characters looking on longingly in the pouring rain. It never misses a chance to be so damn dramatic, but it works for this film, as it never stumbles in tone. (David Morgan-Brown)Khaleej Times (4 out 5 stars):
In her interpretation, Fennell dissects love and all its synonyms. The care. The admiration. The longing stares across rooms and stables. The steamy, breathless passion. The selflessness. And then the flip side — selfishness, jealousy, obsession, possessiveness, toxicity. It’s messy and destructive; dare I say, for some, it might even feel uncomfortably relatable. Not because we endorse the chaos, but because we recognise the intensity of loving someone who feels like they are stitched into your very being.
But let’s be clear: there is obvious underlying toxicity here, and at times it makes the film more provocative than romantic. There’s a particularly jarring moment where Heathcliff, driven by jealousy, manipulates and uses an innocent girl. She appears to indulge it, almost drawn to the danger, but the abruptness of it is horrifying. It’s uncomfortable to watch because it forces you to confront what certain emotions can bring out in people. (...)I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a tale of obsessive, destructive love like this in a long time. Is it perfect? No. Is it subtle? Definitely not. But is it an experience, especially on Valentine’s weekend, when you're surrounded by pretty love stories? Absolutely. (Husain Rizvi)
La mare de totes les relacions tòxiques. (...) La directora d'Una jove prometedora i Saltburn revalida aquí la seva aposta, intermitentment efectiva, per acumular plans enlluernadors, però sorprèn que malgrat disparar la libido de Margot Robbie i Jacob Elordi, i entretenir-se amb postals sadomasoquistes, acabi entregant un film que no només mira des d’una distància prudencial els abismes de violència física i emocional de la seva font sinó que tanca els ulls per higienitzar les accions més abominables dels protagonistes. D’entre tot aquest desgavell sobresurt la tasca compositiva de Charli XCX, que ha trobat en aquest projecte una via per explorar registres i sonoritats ben allunyades de les fosforescències verdes de brat. (Gerard Casau) (Translation)
It’s ambitious and entertaining, but in aiming for spectacle it loses some of Brontë’s darkness, perhaps its greatest flaw. No matter the caveats, comparisons will still be made with the story that inspired it, and in that sense “Wuthering Heights” is an interesting experiment that shocks more than it inspires. (Victoria Luxford)
Cathy and Heathcliff, who are kept apart for long stretches of the story, are as star-crossed as they come — it's telling that in one scene, Isabella is recounting the plot of "Romeo and Juliet" — but the chemistry between the two leads never quite ignites the screen. Elordi and Robbie inhabit their roles, and the mechanics of the story do their part in keeping them apart. But does their love burn with the heat of a thousand flames? Ehh, not quite.Still, there is plenty to admire in this "Wuthering Heights," not the least of which is the way it makes the nearly 200-year-old material feel contemporary and vital. (The goth-pop soundtrack by Charli xcx helps in that department as well.) This is a large-scale costume drama with an epic scope, and Fennell makes sure it's anything but stodgy. (Adam Graham)
For her shiny new take on “Wuthering Heights,” the writer-director Emerald Fennell has drenched the screen with torrential rain, filled it with pantomimes of passion and tried hard to compete with Emily Brontë. What a mistake! Over the past century or so, Brontë’s only novel has been nipped and tucked in assorted adaptations — for film, television, theater, opera, ballet and song — that have pushed and pulled it in different directions. It’s been glossed up, brought down to earth and read through the lenses of gender, class and race. Yet like its violently emotional lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff, the book resists taming. (...)One problem with Fennell’s take, though, is that she wants to focus on the lovers while saying a lot about a lot. She tosses out ideas about women, men, sex, freedom and dominance, even while eliding the question of Heathcliff’s race, and trying to transmit the power of Brontë’s writing visually. Some of this is banal. Such is the case when, after some torturous narrative turns, Catherine weds her wealthy neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), her new suffocating life is signaled by a dollhouse replica of her marital home. (...)There’s more — so much more — including her simpering sister-in-law, Isabella (Alison Oliver), a human kick-me sign, and the soft, light-beige walls of Catherine’s bedroom that have been designed to resemble her skin, marbled veins and all. Why? Why not? Each room offers more sumptuous, strainingly clever details that expound on the same themes without deepening them. It’s like being force-fed candy.Every reader makes “Wuthering Heights” into her own, and the same holds true for Fennell. Yet as the movie progresses — especially after Catherine and Heathcliff temporarily go their separate ways — Fennell’s embellishments grow more exaggerated and distracting, and her hold on the story becomes increasingly tenuous. (Manohla Dargis)
Fin dalla prima sequenza - una impiccagione in piazza in cui alcune giovani donne commentano maliziose l’erezione post mortem del condannato - Fennell gioca con un erotismo sfrontato visto da parte femminile, una risposta emotiva a qualcosa di primordiale, come lei stessa ha dichiarato, che l’ha sconvolto profondamente quando ha letto il libro per la prima volta a quattordici anni. Desideri ed emozioni sottintesi nel romanzo sono esplicitate di continuo con metafore poco sottili - appiccicosi tuorli d’uova, lumache striscianti nella lucida bava e l’impasto morbido del pane - che alludono a secrezioni intime.L’estetica è aggiornata al presente attraverso i costumi indossati da Robbie della premio Oscar Jacqueline Durran, che attingono all’epoca elisabettiana e vittoriana, con l’omaggio esplicito al vestito rosso indossato da Rossella O’Hara in Via col Vento, fino alle creazioni della moda contemporanea; con le scenografie di Suzie Davies che citano Barbie; la colonna sonora di Anthony Willis e il discutibile hyperpop di Charlie XCX. Non c’è bisogno di sapere che le IP generalmente funzionano bene per il pubblico che vuole vedere storie che già conosce, per predire un sicuro successo tra l’audience più giovane di un film che scompone e ricompone a piacimento un libro che ha saputo scavare nelle profondità dell'amore e della perdita e ha esplorato lo svilupparsi di una passione malata e autodistruttiva. E che qui viene espressa con selvaggia e grottesca intensità. (Camillo De Marco) (Translation)
Visually, this is a stunning movie. Musically, it adds a modern beat that conveys emotion well. But those are pretty much the only nice things I have to say about 2026’s Wuthering Heights. (Emily Tsiao)
Eye-catching but superficial. (...) This ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a teenage sex dream that ends halfway through the book, which is maybe where 14-year-old Fennell stopped. In fact, in this version, neither Cathy nor Heathcliff have children, which means there can be no trauma passed on to the next generation, which is totally at the heart of this dark, complex, brutal novel that shouldn’t be a Valentine’s date, I promise you. Fennell’s treatment is eye-catching but superficial and because Robbie’s Cathy is like a capricious Scarlett O’Hara and Elordi’s Heathcliff is a hot boyfriend who broods, you can never buy into them as deeply connected soulmates. #TeamPurist all the way. (Deborah Ross)
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The one-night-only concert event will bring Paul Gordon and John Caird’s musical adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel to the stage with the New York City Chamber Orchestra and a 400-voice chorus.Henningsen will star as Jane Eyre opposite Karimloo as Edward Fairfax Rochester. The cast will also include Natalie Allen, Clara Bishop, Caroline Bowman, Runako Campbell, Robert Curtis, David Michael Garry, Jada German, Marc Kudisch, Ada Manie, Austin Scott, Emily Skinner, Elizabeth Stanley, Christianne Tisdale, and Brittany Nicole Williams. Casting is subject to change.Directed by Tony Yazbeck, with music direction by Brad Haak, the concert staging places emphasis on the score’s orchestration and vocal writing while presenting the sweeping narrative in symphonic form. The newly released videos highlight moments from rehearsal as the principals, orchestra, and chorus prepare the story of resilience, passion, and self-discovery for performance. (A.A. Cristi)
This re-imagined chamber adaptation of the piece premiered in 2024 at Theatre Raleigh in North Carolina. The updated version features a smaller orchestra size, a slimmed-down cast (with opportunities for doubling), and changes to the lyrics and book.Paul Gordon and John Caird were eager to make this updated adaptation the definitive version available for licensing, as it hues closer to their original vision of the piece and is more accessible to theatres because of the flexible casting and orchestration options.“We are so happy this new chamber adaptation is now available for licensing,” shared Gordon and Caird. “In these uncertain times we believe audiences want to feel uplifted when going to the theatre. Jane Eyre might take some dark turns, but the story is infused with such feeling, such passion, it restores the soul. If it makes you cry, we trust it will be for all the right reasons.” (Nicole Rosky)
As a reader, I’m more of a “Jane Eyre” girl than a “Wuthering Heights” girl. Of course, I first devoured the novels at an age when I was too young to understand the Heathcliff-Catherine ourobouros dynamic; lonely, bookish orphan Jane was more my speed.But when I got to college and fell madly in love for the first time, I was primed for the Kate Bush version of “Wuthering Heights,” an avant-garde musical number, all shrieks and pleading. Somehow Bush, that Ur-diva of the ’80s, wrapped up the plot of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel better than any SparkNotes could (this was long before AI). Swathed in lyrics and melody instead of chaptered prose, I got it: Here were two people who embodied the idea behind can’t live with or without you.I’m still a reader, one who spends some of my reading time professionally, as a book critic. Talk about wild and windy moors, temper and jealousy! Yet I come back again and again like Cathy, to my own “only master,” stories, words and their creators. In the words of Kate Bush, I can’t “leave behind my Wuthering Wuthering Wuthering Wuthering Heights ...“ (Bethanne Patrick)
You know what this issue is? It’s an Old Testament/New Testament problem. The Heathcliff in the first half of the novel is a brute, but a comprehensible one. His actions aren’t good, but they exist on a spectrum of human emotion that you can wrap your brain around. Yes, one would be furious if one overheard the love of one’s life tell someone else that marrying you would “degrade” her. Yes, it would suck badly if you went off to make the fortune required to be worthy in her eyes, but by the time you’d done it, she’d married someone else.(We’re not going to speak of the mistreatment of Isabella’s dog, which also occurs in the first half. We’re going to assume Brontë understands she literally screwed the pooch on that one and would change it if she could.)But Heathcliff’s malevolence really peaks in the second half of the novel, which I hadn’t remembered until I reread it last week. Catherine dies and there’s still 200 pages left. Heathcliff uses those 200 pages to ruin the lives of the next generation of Earnshaws and Lintons. He punishes Catherine’s daughter because her father was Edgar, not him. He punishes his own son because his mother was Isabella, not Catherine.He repeats the abuse that he suffered as a child, he seizes property, he’s monstrous. Nobody gets a moment’s peace until he dies, a full three decades in the future.The new movie doesn’t show any of this, nor do other cinematic adaptations. It cuts off at the novel’s midpoint and for good reason: because when Catherine dies, any sympathy we might have had for Heathcliff dies too. Now he’s not a sexy man propelled by love and longing, he’s an absolute weirdo who needs whatever the 19th century version of therapy is. (Leeches?)The people who create posts on Reddit about Heathcliff being a monster seem to remember that the second half of the novel exists. The people who love him anyway might have done what I did: quietly forget it. Treat it as a collection of ideas for a sequel that somebody accidentally published. Treat it as apocrypha, not canon.Treat it as the escapism your silly heart occasionally longs for. It’s fiction, after all — the idea that somebody is so madly in love with you that they would rather your decrepit, annoying ghost shamble after them for all eternity than live even one minute alone. (Monica Hesse)
Durran’s costumes are clever because they work psychologically, not just historically. Just like the movie. Emerald recently said the upcoming film is not tied to a specific, rigid time period, but rather acts as a "fantasy of a fantasy" that focuses on the emotional experience of the story rather than historical accuracy.Instead of romanticising the period, the clothes reflect power, repression, and emotional states. Catherine’s shifts in dress throughout the narrative mirror her movement between wildness and social constraint. The use of latex-looking fabrics and bold colour is genius because it quietly modernises Wuthering Heights without breaking its gothic core. The latex adds an unnatural sheen, suggesting control, restriction, and something almost suffocating, while the colour choices signal emotional states and power shifts rather than strict realism. Together, they make the characters feel trapped in their desires, turning costume into a visual language for obsession and repression instead of mere period accuracy. (Olivia Lower)
Cathy’s costumes in Fennell’s film veer into [William] Wyler territory often: she teases fellow character Isabella Linton about her doomed crush on Heathcliff in the Thrushcross Grange manor, while wearing a white tulle frock with velvet appliqué vines that looks strikingly similar to a dress actress Merle Oberon wore on-screen in 1939. Then there is the blood-red, velvet hooded cape and white fur hand-warmer Robbie wears when Cathy visits Wuthering Heights for the first time since marrying Edgar Linton. Oberon, too, donned a velvet, fur-trimmed hood and fur handwarmer in Wyler’s version. The number of jewels adorned on Robbie don’t look as out of place when you see Oberon wearing a near-identical tiara, drop earrings and floral diamond necklace some 87 years earlier.“When I’m asked about why the costumes are a particular way, I find that really difficult to answer,” designer Durran said in London. “It’s a kind of instinctive, emotional reason.” Fennell agreed: “It’s not connected to the period, it’s connected to the emotional truth.” (...)Ultimately, Fennell is referencing a period in history, just not 1847, when Brontë wrote the novel, and not the late 1700s, when it is set. By choosing her references from the big screen rather than history, she’s made a film for cinephiles, not the bookworms. The result might be as shallow as a puddle on a sunny day — but it certainly caught the light. (Leah Dolan)
It goes without saying that extensive research and understanding of the era is imperative – it’s the foundation of any good costume designer. However, when we’re (mostly) already dealing with works of fiction, who’s to say that costume designers can’t add a few flourishes of their own? Ultimately, it’s about the story that the director is trying to tell. And if a pair of Converse, a diamond grill, or Margot Robbie wrapped up in cellophane helps to communicate that story, then why the hell not? (Isobel Van Dyke)
Of literature’s “three weird sisters”—as writer Ted Hughes famously dubbed the Brontës—Emily is the weirdest, probably because history knows so little about her. Sandwiched between bestselling Jane Eyre author Charlotte, the family’s press-savvy manager and myth-maker, and Agnes Grey writer Anne, the sweet and pious peacemaker, was Emily Jane, the elusive middle sister whose personality still evades readers nearly two centuries after her untimely death.“The strange one,” as she’s often called, may have been autistic, antisocial, agoraphobic, and/or anorexic. She may have been a lesbian, or in an incestuous relationship with her brother. In any case, the author of Wuthering Heights—arguably the horniest Gothic novel ever written—was probably a virgin with a vivid imagination. As a soaking-wet Heathcliff on horseback rides over wild moors and onto movie theatre screens yet again in Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of the novel, here are some burning questions biographers are still asking about the strangest Brontë sister. (...)Modern armchair psychologists have inevitably diagnosed Emily Brontë with a revolving door of diseases and disorders, from “neurosis” to agoraphobia to social anxiety to—the most popular pick of recent years—neurodivergence or autism. “She was probably somewhere on the spectrum, like lots of people are,” says Brontë biographer Nick Holland. “Autism would certainly explain a lot.” But the meaning, if any, of a modern-day diagnosis is debatable. “The idea of autism didn’t even exist in the 19th century,” says [Deborah] Lutz, “so it’s not very helpful.” (...)But Branwell was one of so few men in Emily Brontë’s world that historians have considered him to be a possible inspiration for Heathcliff, Catherine’s adopted brother turned love interest. Another possibility is William Weightman, the flirtatious curate with whom the 2022 film Emily imagined a torrid affair. Robert Heaton was a neighbour said to have planted Emily a pear tree, which embarrassed her. In Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia argued Emily was a lesbian, and she herself is Heathcliff—yearning for love she cannot have.Another once perfectly reasonable explanation for the Brontës’ monstrous literary talent? Witchcraft. Ted Hughes likened the trio to “three weird sisters,” the witches whose prophecy begins Macbeth—invoking an old theory with deep roots. “That they were witches with some kind of elemental power came from the late 19th-century idea that women couldn’t be intellectuals or craftswomen, they were just channels receiving and transmitting information,” says [Graham] Watson. It’s “all nonsense, of course,” he adds, though perhaps not entirely undeserved—Emily was eternally fascinated with superstition and the occult. (...)Even after she got sick, Emily went about her days as she always did, such that no one realized how close she was to death. Legend says she refused to retire to her bed, as is customary, and died on the sofa in the dining room instead. True or not, some 80,000 Brontë devotees still visit annually their former home in Haworth, now a Brontë museum, to see the sofa that once held the strangest Brontë—a defiant enigma until her very end. (Rosemary Counter)
"There was a scene where she was sort of reading a sexy book at one point," Olivia began, before Margot clarifies: "Yeah, Emerald found 18th Century p-rn... and the scene didn't make the movie but it was like Isabella saying her prayers before bed, and then getting to bed and pulling out this 18th Century p-rn - which exists, it's really weird." (Priyanca Rajput)
Ara explores why 'yearning' has become fashionable in series and cinema. Marie Claire explores the (many, many) differences between the Wuthering Heights 2026 film and book. Daily Mail goes straight ahead for the good stuff: How racy is the film and let's dissect all the raunchy scenes. Secret Manchester and The National explore some of the shooting locations of the film. The Toronto Star interviews Emerald Fennell.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi Reclaim Emily Brontë’s Wild Romance. (...)Fennell’s screenplay and direction absorbs the audience, preserving the book’s refusal to moralize, justify, or judge its characters. “This is not a didactic film; it takes no moral position,” she remarks. It reshapes character, tone, and scale for the screen, and asks viewers to experience Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff’s (Jacob Elordi) cruelty, charisma, and longing as both an intimate character portrayals and vivid spectacle. (...)Fennell acknowledges the risk associated with the project. “Because I love the book so much, it felt exciting to see if I could make a version that I would accept as a fan. And then obviously it was a shameless excuse to work with everyone I love.”For writers and directors considering adaptations, Fennell’s process is a model: start with the core feelings the source evokes, identify the elements that still resonate, and write a screenplay that privileges emotional truth over tidy moralizing and neat conclusions. The result, she hopes, is a film that does what the best adaptations do: it makes the original feel newly alive.
Emerald Fennell’s horny and indulgent adaptation is a bold reclamation of Emily Brontë’s misunderstood prose. (...)The film’s explicitness will divide audiences. Scenes of raw sexual expression and bodily intensity replace Victorian repression with contemporary candour. It is unsubtle. It is melodramatic. It occasionally overstates its themes with the confidence of a director who knows subtlety has never been her brand. But Fennell understands something essential: Brontë’s work was never a polite romance. It was scandalous in its own time because it exposed love as violent, selfish, and corrosive. This version doesn’t romanticise toxicity; it presents it as a narcotic force that consumes everything in its path.For purists, this will feel like heresy. For others, it will feel invigorating. Fennell doesn’t attempt to create a definitive “Wuthering Heights” – she creates a heightened, contemporary fever-dream interpretation. It is messy, excessive and occasionally self-indulgent, but it is never timid. In restoring the story’s feral energy and erotic charge, Fennell reminds us that classics endure not because they remain frozen, but because they can withstand being reimagined. This isn’t Brontë preserved in amber. It’s Brontë set alight. (Peter Gray)
Sensual film will give Emily Brontë purists a fit of the vapours.If you’re happy to take it all with a pinch of salt, then you’ll likely enjoy this immensely. (...)Margot Robbie gives a blackly comic performance as the bratty and self-absorbed ‘wretched shrew’ Cathy, Jacob Elordi delivers handsomely in the role of the scowling, brooding brute, and the backdrop of the bleak and windswept moor is beautifully captured by cinematographer Linus Sandgren.All of which combines to deliver an epic in a minor key, in which each scene is more extravagantly dramatic than the last; the longer it goes on, however, the more the suspicion grows that the extravagance – the frou-frou frocks, Cathy’s dazzling bling, an excessively mannered fever-dream of inevitable doom unfurling – matters more than the characters themselves. (Declan Burke)
Above all, the film beautifully yet intensely portrays passion fading in today’s world. In an era where rationality and efficiency dominate even love and marriage, the primal love that threatens to consume each other provides a powerful catharsis. Margot Robbie, who portrays a candidly desirous Catherine, and Jacob Elordi, whose raw and wild charm captivates her, contribute significantly to the film’s allure. Audiences trapped in mundane reality will be swept into a storm of passionate emotions for two hours. (Baik Su-jin)
‘Wuthering Heights’ is a raunchy and shallow take on a Brontë classic. (...)Yet Fennell’s version branded itself as a film “inspired by the greatest love story of all time.” It is far from that. For starters, Elordi’s portrayal of Heathcliff returning as mysteriously wealthy and gentlemanly was framed as a makeover in a new season of “Bridgerton.” He was supposed to be rich, handsome, cruel, and vindictive. Meanwhile, Robbie’s starry-eyed Cathy was meant to be spoiled, selfish, and snobbish. The actress had the potential to make it work — as seen in her scoffs and eye rolls in scenes — but she was reduced to a Barbie doll for Runway. (...)But if there’s one thing that’s worthy of praise, it’s the picturesque cinematography, which Fennell is a master of. She knows the right angles and how to make a scene aesthetically pleasing. Many of the scenes were even a callback to Technicolor. However, there are several instances in which a beautiful scene is prioritized over complexity, whereas Brontë’s novel is meant to be a disturbing commentary on social class, race, and the lengths one will go to in pursuit of revenge. (Hannah Mallorca)
Con independencia de lo que no está en el guion, esta adaptación de Cumbres borrascosas no supera los límites estructurales del libro de Emily Brontë ni los de las versiones de William Wyler —la mejor hasta la fecha—, Luis Buñuel —genial acercamiento a la esencia del relato decimonónico bajo el título de Abismos de pasión— y Peter Kosminsky. Semejante hecho desinfla en emociones extremas, al borde del delirio sobrenatural, la película de Fennell.La responsable de Saltburn confía el mayor empaque de su puesta en escena a la química sensual que despliega la pareja formada por Jacob Elordi y Margot Robbie. La apuesta no sale mal parada, pero convierte a los apasionados Heathcliff y Cathy en individuos movidos por una atracción inestable y altamente carnal que nunca entona la letanía espectral presente en las otras versiones cinematográficas de la inmortal novela de Emily Brontë. (Jesús Martín) (Translation)
Emerald Fennell’s Lackluster Take On Emily Brontë’s Classic Bodice-Ripper Never Steams Up. (...)There’s lots of snogging but, after the excesses of Saltburn, the sex is surprisingly chaste, most of it left to the imagination. Neither is the script terribly funny, given what we might expect from Fennell’s famous black humor. Instead, it doesn’t ever really settle, moving from the Earnshaws’ decrepit home (the estate that gives the film its title) to the Lintons’ place, alternating austere, brutalist locations with beautiful but soullessly decorative sets that would be dismissed, respectively, as a bit too much by Robert Eggers and not enough by Melania Trump, whose Winter White Houses the Linton pile mostly resembles.Most puzzling of all is the weird absence of any significant oomph; it’s simply watched from afar by Nelly (now Hong Chau), who is always being fired but never seems to leave, in by far the most thankless role in the movie. A key stumbling block is Heathcliff’s thick Yorkshire accent, which is about as erotic as phone sex with Ozzy Osbourne, but an even bigger problem is that from the midpoint on, Fennell’s film has played its entire hand and lurches to an end almost entirely bereft of subtext. Top hats off, then, to Clunes as the only complex character in the movie; too bad that, once Mr. Earnshaw is killed off, death for everyone within a five-mile radius begins to seem like a very enticing prospect. (Damon Wise)
Emerald Fennell’s ‘Interpretation’ Of The Brontë Classic Is Hollow, Lacks Narrative DepthClassics should be left alone! (...)By robbing the prime narrative, Fennell left no room for the character arcs, ultimately leaving plots all over the place. Passion is what defines Wuthering Heights, but so are forbidden love, class hierarchies, racism, and morality. It can’t be all erotica when it comes to yearning and volatile love. In addition, the pairing did not fit the narrative. Both brought in their individual craft, but together, their chemistry was so out of place. There was no spark or emotion in their arc. (Madhurima Sarkar)
El hueso está, pero al caldo le falta sustancia BrontëMargot Robbie y Jacob Elordi se lanzan apasionadamente y con afanes destructivos el uno contra el otro, pero con una inquietante maquinaria sentimental como de telenovela. (...)Margot Robbie y Jacob Elordi tienen, desde luego, la 'pócima' suficiente en su físico como para provocar esos amores desquiciados, y se lanzan apasionadamente y con afanes destructivos el uno contra el otro, pero con una inquietante maquinaria sentimental como de telenovela (al fin y al cabo, cumple su papel de obra fundacional, preludio, de las telenovelas 'modernas'). Están bien, arrebatados, atractivos, doloridos, pero están mucho mejor esos personajes en su versión infantil, con Owen Cooper y Charlotte Mellington, y explican mejor y sin necesidad de arrumacos y 'te quieros' la comunión de alma de sus personajes. Margot Robbie es insuperable en papeles descabellados, pasados de rosca y con su punta de comedia y picardía, pero no se acaba de encontrar por estas cumbres tan serias, pretenciosas y algo llanas. (Oti Rodríguez Marchante) (Translation)
El resultado es, precisamente, una visión inmadura que despoja a la obra de su complejidad para convertirla en un producto de consumo estético.La novela original de 1847 constituye una de las piezas más violentas y crudas de la literatura inglesa. Emily Brontë escribe sin tapujos sobre el odio, la exclusión social y el ciclo del abuso.Sin embargo, Fennell decidió ignorar estas tensiones para centrarse en una interpretación libre que no le hace justicia al libro. Hay una orfandad de una narrativa que traiciona su origen.Adaptar Cumbres borrascosas requiere una comprensión del horror y la depravación. Sí, el filme cubre la estructura de la historia, pero con una colección de fetiches visuales y un erotismo que confunde la obsesión metafísica con la urgencia hormonal. (...)Esta simplificación podría ser la mayor traición a la literatura de los últimos tiempos.Emily Brontë escribió una obra maestra de la crueldad y la pasión. Emerald Fennell dirigió un videoclip suntuoso con seda y luces de neón que desaparece de la memoria en cuanto se encienden las luces de la sala. (Karem González) (Translation)
Sydneysiders in the know had two reasons to flock to George Street on Thur
sday: to be among the first in the country to shop Hailey Bieber’s billion-dollar beauty brand, Rhode, at Mecca, or lock eyes with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi on the blue carpet as they unleashed “Wuthering Heights” upon Australian cinemagoers. (Bronte Gossling)
To me, a fellow Queenslander, this is funny. The protagonists of one of the most iconic English novels of all time are depicted by two Queenslanders, who are less used to the wet and wild moors of Yorkshire, and more used to the Wet ‘n’ Wild theme park on the Gold Coast. (Rebecca Shaw)
More pictures and stuff in ABC News, Red Carpet Fashion Awards (Margot Robbie Wore Ashi Studio Couture apparently), Daily Telegraph, Refinery29...
Wyedean Weaving, a Haworth-based specialist in braiding and ceremonial manufacturing, was commissioned to produce a replica of the 175-year-old mourning bracelet once owned and worn by Charlotte Brontë. The original piece, housed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, is crafted from hand-woven hair believed to belong to her sisters Emily and Anne, and features garnets set in gold – a style typical of 19th-century mourning jewellery. (...)Rebecca Yorke, Director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said the Parsonage immediately recommended Wyedean for its experience, tools and technical expertise. She added: “When Andrew asked for suggestions of who might be able to recreate a faithful and high-quality replica of Charlotte’s garnet bracelet, I immediately recommended the Wyedean team. It was particularly fitting that they’re based in a building that would have been known to the Brontës. We are now working with Robin and his team to create a limited edition of the piece to sell via our museum shop.”Robin added: “This has been an extraordinary collaboration between heritage manufacturers, jewellers and museum specialists and has resulted in a faithful replica worthy of the Brontë legacy. We are thrilled to be part of celebrating British craftsmanship, ingenuity and historical respect across the generations. This goes down in our history of one of our greatest manufacturing achievements.” (Oriana Storey)
Douglas Greenwood: You have a personal connection to Wuthering Heights, right?Shazad Latif: I do. The 1939 version was one of the VHS tapes my nan had in a wooden cabinet when I was growing up. She was an old movie buff, so we’d rewatch it. I’d known about Cathy and Heathcliff since I was a kid.
LUHRMANN: Virginia Woolf is a really good one, because it’s a co-dependency where they’re tearing each other apart, but they can’t live without each other. You say that “They’re souls—” I can’t give away dialogue, I suppose.FENNELL: Well, you can, because it’s all Brontë. The thing that’s really really fun about this is that although I’ve taken some small liberties for dramaturgical reasons, I’ve been really faithful to Brontë’s dialogue. Even the scenes later in the movie that are a little more transgressive, almost all of that dialogue is Brontë.LUHRMANN: Yeah. I hope this doesn’t sound self-serving, but when I did Romeo + Juliet, and Craig [Pearce] and I were working on the text, every word was written by Shakespeare. We just cut and movedsome of it around. In Wuthering Heights, you don’t think about Brontë, you just think they speak like us—that they are us, you know?FENNELL: Yeah. The thing about an adaptation is you need to coexist with it and let it be the beautiful thing that it is. Nobody loves Emily Brontë more than I do. I’m a creepy obsessive. But I also know you can’t do a fully faithful adaptation of this, because it would be too long and simply wouldn’t work as a movie.(...)FENNELL: And translate it. There’s this brilliant piece of literary criticism from 50 years ago that says Nelly Dean is the real villain of Wuthering Heights, which is interesting. That thing of female relationships, that thing of loving someone and hating them, extends to every single person in this, right?LUHRMANN: I totally agree.FENNELL: Something’s only truly narratively engaging if you like and dislike characters in equal measure. The problem, and the joy, of Wuthering Heights is that Cathy and Heathcliff are the two least likable characters ever written.
The Ringer thinks that the film could be the hate-watch event of the year. The Wayward Curator thinks that Isabella Linton in this film finally gets agency and is liberated. Tyla discusses Cathy's 'skin room' in the film. House Beautiful explores the film 'easter eggs': sweating rooms, low ceilings, a dollhouse inside a house, a lamb inside a case, an allusion to a famous Fragonard painting...
Before Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi step into the wild world of Wuthering Heights under Emerald Fennell, Bollywood quietly did something unexpected. It took Emily Brontë’s dark, obsessive classic and flipped it on its head.Back in 2000, Dhadkan arrived with rain songs, dramatic stares, and one of the most iconic love triangles of its time. Officially called a loose adaptation of the novel, the film kept the skeleton of Brontë’s story but changed the soul of it completely. If the book whispered despair, Dhadkan sang hope at full volume. (Nillohit Bagchi)
Thus, as the protagonist (or, with the amount of violence he commits, rather the anti-hero), Heathcliff has much to overcome. Dehumanizing treatment from his adopted family, the loss of his lover to a man more privileged and respected than he will ever be, constantly despised and doubted...in a quest for vengeance, Wuthering Heights transforms from a simple story of tortured lovers into a sweeping family saga that looks at the darkest corners of the human soul. Brontë addresses thorny topics like social class, race, feminism and religion in a way that literary scholar John Burton called "transgressive," breaking not just narrative norms, but moral ones as well. (Marissa Wu)
In the end, Wuthering Heights serves as a warning about the terrible results of concealing one’s true identity. While the first half of the book is a tempest of hatred, the second half offers a tenuous ray of hope through the children of the original protagonists. The final coupling of the younger Cathy and the rugged Hareton Earnshaw suggests that a balanced love that incorporates passion, education, and kindness can end the trauma cycle. (C. Sharmishtha)
Isabel Loscertales: ¿A qué te refieres?C.A.G.: El tema del amor me apetecía muchísimo y más de esa manera tan intensa y profunda, tan Cumbres borrascosas, aunque sea un ejemplo arrogante. (Translation)
The village of Hathersage features in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the writer is said to have visited the village often. In fact an Eyre family resided in the area, at the North Lees Hall, a mile away from the village, reputedly the inspiration for Thornfield Hall in the novel. (Liv Clarke)
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them.
Una frase de Emily Brontë, publicada hace más de 170 años, vuelve a ser comentada en redes y medios culturales por su vigencia política y social: “El tirano oprime a sus esclavos y éstos no se vuelven contra él, sino que aplastan a los que tienen debajo”. La escritora británica, conocida sobre todo por Cumbres Borrascosas, describía con claridad un fenómeno que hoy se observa en distintas formas de jerarquía y abuso de poder, desde empresas y organizaciones hasta contextos sociales y políticos.
El comentario de Brontë es contundente: el abuso no se limita al enfrentamiento directo con quien detenta el poder, sino que genera una cadena de violencia descendente. Esta reflexión literaria conecta con debates contemporáneos sobre desigualdad, acoso laboral y dinámicas autoritarias, provocando que lectores y especialistas en redes sociales revisiten la obra de la autora bajo una perspectiva más política y crítica. (Translation)
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by Luis BuñuelMexico | 1954 | 91m | SpanishTIFF Lightbox (Luis Buñuel: Desire and Deviance)Cinema 4 - Paul & Leah Atkinson Family CinemaFebruary 12, 7:00 PMAdapted from the same source material, and screening before the release of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, join us on February 12 for a rare presentation of Luis Buñuel’s fevered adaptation.35mm print!Among the myriad literary film adaptations of Emily Brontë’s gothic masterpiece Wuthering Heights — from William Wyler’s acclaimed 1939 version to Emerald Fennell’s anticipated 2026 update — Luis Buñuel’s own interpretation has been heralded as among the most faithful. Shifting the period and setting from the 19th-century wild and remote Yorkshire moors to mid-century rural Mexico, Buñuel’s tempestuous and ill-fated lovers Cathy and Heathcliff are reborn as Alejandro and Catalina. After years of absence, a now wealthy Alejandro (Jorge Mistral) returns home, where Catalina (Irasema Dilián) is newly pregnant with her first child and unable to leave her marriage of convenience, which the contemptuous and possessive Alejandro proves unwilling to accept. Often overshadowed by the singular achievements of Los Olvidados (1950) and Él (1953), Wuthering Heights loses none of the twisted force of its source material while being exemplary of the Spanish auteur’s fertile Mexican period in this classic tale of amour fou. (Amanda Brason)
A messy, occasionally irresistible adaptation. (...)The result is something that isn’t “Wuthering Heights,” but is sort of “Wuthering Heights”-adjacent: two extremely melodramatic (and very good-looking) people flinging themselves toward and away from each other, under some very threatening-looking skies. And, despite all the wall-licking and erotic bread-kneading and leeches and extremely fetishized raw eggs (Fennell is, shall we say, not a particularly subtle filmmaker), it has its moments. When Heathcliff breathily tells a swooning Catherine, “Kiss me, and let us both be damned,” out on those otherworldly moors, it’s the kind of larger-than-life moment that movies are made for. This “Wuthering Heights” is a mess, but an occasionally irresistible one. (Moira MacDonald)
The movie’s biggest strength is that it’s not too deep. It's visually stunning but is ultimately empty calories. Two of Hollywood’s hottest stars, both in terms of fame and attractiveness, are frolicking in the English countryside, arguing in palatial mansions and hooking up passionately in the rain. You could sell the movie on Robbie’s ability to cry beautifully and Elordi's towering dominance, and Fennell kind of does.Using 35mm VistaVision cameras to create dreamy and harrowing shots, Fennell taps into her great visual eye and allows beauty and pining to be the center of her adaptation. (Amanda Luberto)
Emily Brontë Is Rolling In Her Grave — But Watch This AO3 Fanfiction Anyway.A sexy, wind-swept rewrite that forgets the novel’s bite but delivers swoony cinematic heat (...)Perhaps this version will resonate with viewers encountering the story for the first time. Perhaps it will ignite renewed interest in Brontë’s text. Adaptations need not replicate; they can reinterpret, critique, modernise. Fidelity is not the only measure of success.But Wuthering Heights is not simply a love story that can be extracted from its socio-political soil without consequence. It is a novel about poverty, power, racialisation, and the way love can blur into possession. Strip away those layers, and what remains is visually sumptuous but philosophically thin.Emily Brontë wrote a book that refuses domestication. It is structurally fragmented, morally ambiguous, resistant to comfort. This adaptation dresses it in silk and candlelight, frames it in golden-hour splendour, and lets the wind howl through exquisitely designed sets.The wind still rages. I only wish the story had been allowed to do the same. But this deserves a watch on the big screen. (Ekta SInha)
This is a saucier adaptation of Wuthering Heights than has been made before. Though I prefer Emily (2022), whether you’ll like this will depend on whether you can look past the changes from the book (of which half is missing) and enjoy the romance despite the chaos they bring to everyone else. One thing is for certain – they won’t be showing this version in schools. (Sunny Ramgolam)
Sex,sex and more sex. (...)If Ms Fennell wants to make a sexed-up version of “Wuthering Heights”, that is her prerogative. None of it will surprise anyone who has seen her previous films, “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn”, both of which touch on the dark side of desire. David Thomson, a film historian, says Ms Fennell’s work has “got a real sense of sensuality, sexuality, danger” and a “kind of recklessness” in its willingness to take risks. Her fans may appreciate her boldness, not to mention the sumptuous costumes and occasional jokes.Devotees of the novel, however, will be dismayed that Brontë’s tale of class, obsession and violence has been so distorted. Many will believe that she has desecrated the book and hollowed out its characters. Luckily, purists can turn on one of many other, more faithful adaptations.They should also bear in mind the wry observation of James Cain, an American novelist and journalist whose work was the basis for “Double Indemnity”, among other films. “People tell me, ‘Don’t you care what they’ve done to your books?’ I tell them, ‘They haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right there on the shelf.’”
If Czech filmmakers Věra Chytilová or Jan Švankmajer ever adapted the work of the Brontë sisters it might look something like 2026’s Wuthering Heights, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. (...)Like all the excess grotesquerie on display, this take on Wuthering Heights isn’t flawless, but it is so packed with provocation and craft that it demands to be seen. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography finds stark beauty in the mud and decay of rural Yorkshire locations, while Anthony Willis’ sweeping score lends the film an ironic romantic grandeur. The magnificent costumes and set design—that flesh-colored wall is a stunner—give the film a tactile, almost nauseating physicality and all but guarantee attention during next year’s awards season.Fennell’s Wuthering Heights may repel as many viewers as it enthralls, but that juxtaposition feels entirely intentional. By dragging Emily Brontë’s story through filth, flesh, and desire, the film strips away centuries of romantic varnish to reveal something far more unsettling underneath. It doesn’t replace the novel so much as interrogate it—and while its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, this is a bold, abrasive, and often mesmerizing act of desecration perfect for Valentine’s Day, 2026. (Jason Pirodsky)
Si el objetivo de ver Cumbres borrascosas en pantalla gigante pasa por celebrar cada plano ostentoso o cada hermoso vestido que Robbie porta como si fuera modelo de un catálogo de modas entonces la experiencia valdrá la pena, pero como ejercicio erótico y sobre todo como melodrama romántico realmente intenso, conmovedor y desgarrador el resultado está lejos de ser convincente. (Diego Batlle) (Translation)
Con Cumbres Borrascosas, Emerald Fennell deja de lado la reverencia al texto original para ofrecer una adaptación que responde más a su propia sensibilidad autoral que a la tradición literaria. Es una propuesta arriesgada y, por momentos, irregular, pero también apasionada y visualmente potente. Si en Saltburn la obsesión se expresaba a través del exceso, aquí se canaliza mediante la estilización y la emotividad. El resultado es una versión distinta, provocadora y decididamente contemporánea de un clásico eterno. (Laia Cabuli) (Translation)
Emily Brontë's classic is remodelled as a schlocky bodice-ripper.This lurid reworking is designed to deliver shocks, mad frocks and a porny eroticism (...)But the famous main characters are two-dimensional cartoon characters (it’s tempting to say, a mock-gothic Barbie and Ken with real genitalia), driven on by the film’s bizarrely split vision. Are they in a legendary tragic story of undying love? Sort of. Is this a knockabout bit of kitsch, complete with lush Charlie XCX balladry, a black comedy vibe and a puerile desire to shock? Hell, yes.Kitsch doesn’t sit well with tragedy, though, because it is a closed system that's there to be looked at, not understood, and definitely not to be empathised with. So it’s no good protesting that the film is nothing like the book, as I would guess it never set out to be. (Try Andrea Arnold’s raw no-budget version for an honest attempt at adaptation that doesn’t infringe the Trades Description Act.) Fennell’s is sui generis but, as such, a misfire. (Helen Hawkins)
"Wuthering Heights" Tears Up The Text. Emerald Fennell’s latest film butchers Brontë and plays with the blood. (...)Slick, sultry, and superficial. All accurate descriptors of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”. But as the scare quotes underpinning this take on Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel suggest, it’s less of an adaptation and more of a loose interpretation of its lingering, haunting impact on our cultural zeitgeist. Though its unfettered gutting of key characters, plot points, and nuances occasionally render it terribly hollow and unsubtle, such seemingly negative qualities manifest as strengths in a scattershot film that boldly ensnares and titillates our senses. (...)Its sheer disregard for its source material gives way to an experience that’s undeniably cathartic in its comedic and sexual release. While Fennell’s film could have shamelessly indulged in its worst tendencies a tad more, as it pulls punches in its more traditionally inclined closing act, it threatens to make us as lovesick as its bruised protagonists and the tortured synths pervading Charli XCX’s soundtrack. Sure, it butchers Brontë, but it’s too much fun watching it play with the blood. (Prabhjot Bains)
‘Wuthering Heights’ Reaches the Horniest of HeightsAnd it’s up to you, dear viewer, if that horniness is a good thing. (...)I have no qualms with directors adapting their favorite novels, and I certainly don’t object to Fennell giving us two hours of softcore Gothic porn. However, it feels as if she’s just stolen Brontë’s main characters and slapped the Wuthering Heights title onto a steamy romance of her own making. Fennell skims over the more sensitive themes of social class, poverty, revenge, and intergenerational trauma in favor of some sexy time between Heathcliff, Catherine, and, honestly, quite a few of the other characters (prepare yourself to see Alison Oliver sporting a metal collar and going, “Woof, woof.”). Wuthering Heights is definitely a visual feast for Fennell, but unfortunately, it’s not saying much. (Mel Wang)
Not Fully Fennell… Or At All Feral (...)The film’s attitude towards sex is invigorating, at times, while also feeling a little shallow. What is the connection between death and arousal? What does it mean to have power? Who has it? Fennell poses these questions without committing to answering them, leaving us with no more than a finger in a fish, a mess of eggs. (Jade Hayden)
Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and their costars are the only things keeping this film from drowning in its own decadence. (...)The book has 34 chapters. But as William Wyler did in 1939 with his adaptation, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier (one of many White actors to be cast as Heathcliff, and who would later play Othello in blackface), Fennell decided to end her movie at the novel’s halfway point, essentially leaving what book lovers might argue is the best part of the story untold.But then, that’s what adaptations can do—take an old story and meld it into something new, something that speaks to the current moment or sheds light on the past. Only, Fennell’s storytelling doesn’t speak to much of anything. (Sarah Marloff)
Emily Brontë got it all wrong. A novel intricately tracing the story of two families over several generations, told by multiple narrators, in a complexly interlocking time scheme? Lovers who never consummate their relationship? A hero who is explicitly evil, a nightmare of cruelty and vindictiveness? That will never do. Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) has fixed all these mistakes.As in most adaptations of Wuthering Heights, she has omitted the entire story of the second generation in this family saga, including the ruination of Cathy Earnshaw’s brother, Hindley, and the marriages of her daughter, Cathy Linton, first to Linton Heathcliff and then to Hareton Earnshaw. Whereas other adaptations just stop tactfully short of these complications, Fennell has radically altered the story to abolish them.Cathy here has no brother. It is her father (blustering Martin Clunes) who ruins himself with drink. So that’s one tricky element redacted. Cathy doesn’t have a child with her husband, Edgar Linton; she instead dies of sepsis after a miscarriage. Another poser dodged. And no sex? We are treated to a montage of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) shagging all over the place, inside and out, on the moors, in her weird pink bedroom, in a fairy-tale carriage. No explanation is given of why Edgar (Shazad Latif), hasn’t noticed. So that’s Emily told. Relying on this film to skip the book will get students in deep trouble. (David Sexton)
It’s all undeniably gorgeous, but distractingly so. There are multiple scenes – well, “scenes” seems overly generous – that are little more than excuses for Robbie to wear yet another fancy frock. In an era when scripts are being written for viewers to absorb in between doomscrolling sessions, “Wuthering Heights” is filmed in order to fill endless Vogue photospreads. For all of Elordi’s mutton-chopped brooding and Robbie’s vamping, there’s something shallow and glib about “Wuthering Heights.” Yet again, the psychosexual classic tragedy has been turned into a well-crafted mass-market potboiler. (Richard Whittaker)
En resumidas cuentas, esta nueva Cumbres borrascosas parece una digna hija de su tiempo: es corta de miras, sexy, muy morbosa y trágica hasta rozar la ridiculez.Toda su imaginación está puesta al servicio de la estética y la perturbación sin que medie la más mínima posibilidad de leer entre líneas o hacer un esfuerzo intelectual en ningún momento. Hasta las traiciones más brutales parecen ser un engranaje sistemático que aboca a un final predecible. (Raquel Hernández Luján) (Translation)
